Kevin Brooker, for the Calgary Herald, Calgary Herald

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Breakfast as we know it today is a relatively recent innovation in human affairs. In medieval Europe (whose traditions ultimately spawned their ever-mutating Canadian counterparts), there were two meals, the major one at midday and the other in early evening.

I'm not normally given to specific food cravings, except for one. Every now and then it's somehow imperative that I find the nearest Cantonese won ton house—the kind with roasted pork and fowl hanging from hooks in a steamed-up window—and order a restorative serving of duck lo mein.

Of all the seminal textbooks I lugged around the U of C campus back in the 1970s, none seemed to have quite the promise of true, important knowledge — not to mention sheer weight — as the one simply called Economics, written by Paul Samuelson, first published in 1948, and still in print.

Canadians fancy themselves clever about handling winter's menace. But what could be more stupid than something we all do: Pay dearly to warm our homes against six months' worth of subzero temperatures, only to pay again by using energy-hogging refrigerators and freezers to defeat that heat.